The Elephant in the Room and a Pigeon at the Bar
This is an archived edition of Island Life. Island Life is the bi-monthly newsletter and whimsical musings from the team at Nikoi and Cempedak Islands. You can subscribe to it here.
Clearing the Air
When I started writing this newsletter a few weeks back we were just starting to see the haze caused by forest fires in Indonesia. I was pretty excited about the work we are doing on the conservation front and was silently hoping the haze might disappear from where it came from. By last week as the haze started to get worse I began to feel that I could not ignore the elephant in the room and so you will have to navigate a bit of a rant about that first. In the last few days it seems to have finally started to lift and so has my mood. It is nice to again be able to see my shadow!
To start with, for those wanting to see both historical effects and a forecast, we have recently found a web app called Fire Emissions Watch, which has been a really helpful tool for seeing what the forecast looks like for the next week ahead. Whilst Indonesia is facing the worst fires anywhere in the world at the moment, what I found a little horrifying is how many fires are burning all around the world.
Following the Money Trail
A shoutout to Greenpeace for identifying in their recent report many of the companies that own the concessions in Indonesia where the fires are burning. These concessions are largely owned by palm oil and pulp paper companies. Not surprisingly these concession holders will claim they did not start the fires but that rings a little hollow when a plantation pops up on that land shortly after. Many of these businesses have ties back to companies listed in Singapore and Malaysia and in my mind this is where the prosecution should happen. Singapore has laws around this but not one entity has been prosecuted since they were introduced in 2014. NEA did announce last week that it has sent legal notices to 7 companies under the haze law and will take further action “where warranted”, but it remains to be seen how this will play out given that four investigations from the 2015 haze are still open 11 years on. Let’s hope that this time there is some follow through.
The whole palm oil supply chain is pretty murky - an employee of the largest trader of palm oil was recently found guilty of bribing judges and the company has acknowledged the dumping of palm oil at sea as “standard industry practice” - how does this even pass ESG listing requirements?
What Can You and I Do?
Firstly, don’t buy products that have palm oil - this is not always easy and might need you to get some good glasses so you can read the fine print and understand the litany of names that are used to avoid labelling palm oil. Also recommended is avoiding buying paper and tissue products and if you must, buy from reputable suppliers that use bamboo or recycled material. This WWF website gives scorecards to producers.
Unfortunately, we all have to take some responsibility for this. I do have hope that this might at least lead to more action on stamping out this practice of burning forest to clear land. Support organisations like Greenpeace and WAHLI (Indonesia’s largest environmental group). I am a huge fan of Skytruth, whose Cerulean platform is helping identify the shippers that are responsible for dumping oil at sea.
My thoughts go out to those in Indonesia who are living even closer to the fires where schools are closed and the haze is at hazardous levels. Leadership from Indonesian officials has been lacklustre at best and some of the comments have led to widespread mockery. Ultimately the responsibility should fall to those who benefit from this so following the money trail is, I believe, the best way to stamp this out which is why the Singapore and Malaysia authorities need to play a role so write a letter to your local MP if you live in Singapore.
Many thanks to those of you who, despite the haze, have persevered with their travel plans and come to stay on Nikoi and Cempedak. We will be writing to you separately to offer you a bonus night for the next time you come and stay as a small gesture of our gratitude.
Birds and Bioacoustics
Sorry for the rant on the haze…moving on to more positive news! In my last newsletter I explained how we are using BirdNET, an AI model that takes recordings of bird calls and songs and matches them to a database of 6,000 birds. So far we have more than 15,000 recordings and found 6 new species to add to our records. We have been getting alerts every couple of days about a possible new species being detected. BirdNET doesn't always get it right so we often have to do a bit more homework to work out whether or not it might be a false positive. After reading about what we were doing, I had some experts reach out to offer help, which was lovely. Thanks to Sascha and Julie for helping us sift through our detections.
I have also learnt that interest in birdwatching amongst the younger generation is booming at the moment - my kids will be cringing at the thought of Dad being a step ahead of them! This discovery of bioacoustics has led me to watch David Attenborough’s series titled “Secret World of Sound” which is absolutely fascinating. I also stumbled across this very interesting project in Kalimantan, “Capturing the Last Sounds of a Rainforest”. Here are a couple of recordings that we have captured from Nikoi and Cempedak:
How To Live On Earth
Whilst on the subject of nature films I can highly recommend watching the recently released “How to Live On Earth”. It is beautifully narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch and provides some hope to how we might navigate our challenges on Earth. It is free to view on Youtube.
Feathered New Arrivals
The last few weeks have been particularly busy for new finds as we enter a period when we see a lot of migratory birds passing through. Sometimes these migrants just stop to rest, others pause for longer. One that piqued my interest was the Chinese sparrowhawk. I recall spotting a Japanese sparrowhawk so wondered whether BirdNET might have mixed them up. After a bit more research, we are marking this down as a new species for our lists.
Whilst some of us have been geeking out on bird sounds, the team on the island got a close look at one of the rarest birds that visits the island: a Nicobar Pigeon. This is a very shy bird and hard to observe as it is often amongst the leaf litter. This poor specimen was not doing well so the team propped it up on the bar and gave it a mix of coconut water and water to drink and after a short while it was back on its way. The Nicobar Pigeon is the nearest living relative to the Dodo (yes, the Dodo was a pigeon) which is why we have a Dodo in the bar on Cempedak. A few days later it was seen with a mate so we are hoping we might see some offspring soon.
A recent guest on Nikoi took some spectacular pictures of another of our favourite birds: the Stork-billed kingfisher. This is quite a shy resident and hard to get close to photograph so congrats to Charlotte Lennox for getting such amazing pics.
Swapping Places
I am a big fan of staff exchanges and we have had many staff visit other properties in the region. In November two of our staff are off to Kenya to visit Cottars where I spent a month on an exchange with founder Louise Cottar. Earlier this year Esme, who is in charge of guest relations and events on both islands, spent 3 weeks at Six Senses Laamu in the Maldives. She wrote about her experience in a beautiful blog post.
A Ring Comes Home After 7 Years!
Esme’s predecessor of about 10 years ago was the lovely Tom Mumford. Tom has spent his life around boats so he was always happy helping check things over on the boats whilst he worked with us and got on well with the boat crew.
Most of that team still work for us so when they found a signet ring that Tom used to wear around his neck in the bilge of the hull, they messaged Tom to pass on the good news. Tom was of course elated. Not wanting to trust it to the post, we had it hand delivered back to him in the UK via a network of friends.
Cempedak Goes to Ubud
If you are in Bali from 21st October to 25 October go and check out the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. We are thrilled that the directors of our Writers Residency program on Cempedak, Ken Kwek and Pamela Ng will be on stage talking about “Who Gets to Tell the Story of Paradise?”.
I attended last year’s event and will be going again this year because I enjoyed it so much. Definitely one to check out.
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